"A High Churchman of the old school": Lonsdale and Old High/New Low

Prior to Lent, laudable Practice shared extracts from two sermons by John Lonsdale, an associate of the Hackney Phalanx and later Bishop of Lichfield (1843-67). The Life of John Lonsdale (1868), by his son-in-law, provides an interesting insight into Lonsdale as a representative of the Old High tradition. The work describes Lonsdale as "a High Churchman of the old school, broadened by experience, and inclining always to moderation and comprehension". In this, he was not dissimilar from other bishops in the Old High tradition as, for example, Christopher Bethell (Bishop of Gloucester then Exeter,1824-30) and William Jacobson (Bishop of Chester, 1864-84).

On ritual matters, it is stated that this "High Churchman of the old school" did not at all identify with ceremonies the Tractarians imported into parish churches from cathedrals, such as bowing to the Holy Table or facing east for the Creed:

Neither did he, either in the reading desk, or at the Table, or in his own seat, conform to the practice (for which it is difficult to assign a rational ground) of turning his back on the congregation to say any of the creeds. Still less did he admire the bowings and stoopings which some persons ... have adopted at every Gloria Patri and some other places in the service. He just observed the one obeisance in the Creeds which is universal; but never any more. In these matters his sympathies were with the 'low churchmen'.

We might note two things about this. The first is that it echoes Archbishop Howley's warning regarding the divisive consequences of introducing such practices in ordinary parish churches. Indeed, we are told that Lonsdale's stance is explicitly linked to Howley:

Archbishop Howley did materially check the progress of ritualistic innovations for a time by a letter to the clergy of England in 1845.

It is also not without relevance that Lonsdale had been Howley's domestic chaplain. We see in Lonsdale, therefore, a continuation of Howley's Old High rejection of such practices.

Secondly, Lonsdale should also lead to a reconsideration of the Church of Ireland post-disestablishment 1871 ritual canons.  These are usually interpreted to be a straightforward victory for low church evangelicalism. Lonsdale, however, rather complicates this picture. Consider the provisions of Canons 5 and 37, 'Of the Ordering of Divine Service' and 'Of the Administration of the Lord's Supper':

No Minister or other person during the time of Divine Service shall make the sign of the Cross, save where prescribed in the Rubric; nor shall he bow, or do any other act of obeisance to the Lord's Table, or any thing there or thereon ... Provided always that nothing herein contained shall be taken to prohibit the customary act of reverence when the name of our Blessed Lord is mentioned in reciting the Nicene Creed.

Here the post-disestablishment ritual canons reflect the views of Lonsdale as a representative of the Old High tradition. In addition to this, they also echo Howley's Letter of 1845 and his characteristic Old High concern for ecclesial peace and unity.  In other words, such provisions of the Irish ritual canons were more representative and unifying than the conventional interpretation suggests. Something of this is also seen in F.R. Bolton's famous study The Caroline Tradition in the Church of Ireland (1958), in which he says that the Irish canonical and rubrical requirement to stand at the North End for the Prayer of Consecration "should be regarded as a perpetuation of traditional Anglican usage", rather than a sectarian low church victory.

Lonsdale, like Howley, is an example of how 'Old High can be understood as 'New Low'. He points to the deep caution present in the Old High tradition concerning practices which, in themselves quite modest and not controversial, but which, in ordinary parish churches, could bring division and contention. It is still possible to see the wisdom of this approach in Irish Anglicanism (in other contexts the following examples may differ). What looks reverent in a cathedral or a large church with a choral tradition - turning east for the Creed, bowing to the Holy Table, lighted candles on the altar, use of the cope - can often appear in smaller, rural parishes to be fussy, lacking in meaning, and unnecessary. 

Lonsdale, following Howley, calls us to see and respect the reverence, the wisdom, and the purpose of what was - in the mid-19th century - the vast majority of ordinary parish churches in which such practices, as with 18th century Anglicanism, were unknown. This might lead us to a new appreciation of the modesty and caution of the Old High tradition in the face of Ritualism, and perhaps to ask what role it could have in contemporary Anglicanism amidst a culture bombarded by noise and visual imagery, and rent asunder by culture wars and loud partisanship.